Is anonymous search and surfing the opposite of social media?

Our social media experiences require us to participate as a known members of online communities. Facebook, MySpace et al collect personal data while you communicate with friends, share photos and personalize your profile. Sure, most people are happy with the tradeoff of exchanging their privacy for the joy of social media.
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So, the latest thing is age-verification for minors, where sites like MySpace and Facebook confirm the identities of members under 18 and restrict access only to other children or parent-approved adults. Sounds good and solves a basic online security problem, and a big one at that, right?

Well, yes and no. As the New York Times reported last week, “Online Age Verification for Children Brings Privacy Worries” since the cost of doing this kind of business can be kind of steep – at least under current proposals. The Times discussed one company in particular, eGuardian of Ontario, CA, which “asks a parent to submit the birth date, address, school and gender of a child, then it asks schools to confirm the information.”
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Obama was one of the first politicians to really leverage online social media to its full potential during his campaign for the presidential election, so you’ve got to admit that he knows a thing or two about maintaining an online reputation.  And now that Obama is the president elect, he expects the rest of his administration to disclose some of their online information, according to an article in the New York Times. 

In a 7-page questionnaire, prospective White House employees will need to list their aliases and handles used to communicate on the Internet, among other expected questions pertaining to government new hires.  Now, communicate is a broad term, especially when it comes to the Internet.  For the questionnaire’s purpose, it even includes names used for comments posted on blogs and websites.  Not only is that a daunting task, depending on your level of online activity, but it also crosses a privacy line that has not yet been addressed on this political level. 
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Targeted advertising has become a hot button topic in the social advertising industry. New advertising models have been introduced to target users based on their gender, age and interests as well as tools that target based on their online behavior. Caroline McCarthy posted today about a new eMarketer study released called “Behavioral Targeting Attitudes: The Privacy Issue.”

The new report examines consumers’ attitudes toward targeted advertising and the data being collected about them online. The conclusion is that only 23 percent of users are comfortable with having their online behavior tracked for the purpose of serving more relevant advertisements online. I’m not quite sure whether or not this information is surprising or not but it definitely emphasizes that advertisers need to do a better job of educating consumers about their advertising programs.

I cover privacy issues on this site on a regular basis but readers of this blog are more educated than the average consumer. Just the other day I ran into someone who had heard about the risk presented by Facebook applications through a Washington Post article. He said that he no longer installs the applications. Clearly mainstream media coverage will assist in educating consumers about privacy issues and advertising practices.

For the time being we’ll have to expect many users to be uneducated on the issues leaving the discussion to industry professionals. Not exactly the type of discussion that I’d hope to see but I guess it will have to do for now!

Today at the OMMA Social in New York City, Seth Goldstein, founder of social media advertising network SocialMedia, announced a new service for advertisers called “Friendship Ranks.” The new service combines data related to peoples’ interactions on Facebook applications to generate more effectively targeted ads. Seth also formally announced “social banners”, a service the company has been experimenting with over the past few months.

The “social banners” are an opt-out advertising service which resides within Facebook applications. Sound familiar? The whole Facebook beacon “fiasco” (as it was coined by the press), was due to it being an opt-out service. SocialMedia has been able to figure out a way to display your friends within advertisements that are present on applications. Technically, they’ve also figured out a way to display a fair amount of this information outside of Facebook.

Two weeks ago while attending the Graphing Social Patterns East conference, one of the attendees approached me to show a page on SocialMedia.com’s website that was able to display targeted ads to me based on information they had collected. I have included a screenshot below. Initially, I chose not to write a post on the issue because I wanted to make sure I got all the facts right.

I have since reached out to people that deal with privacy at Facebook about the issue but haven’t heard back yet. I’m guessing I’ll hear something from them in the near future though. So how does SocialMedia display these targeted ads outside of Facebook? Through a collection of data via applications in combination with images obtained via user public profiles and unique cookies they can piece together who you are and who some of your friends are. This is off of Facebook.

There are a number of issues at hand and many of them are extremely complex. Let me first say that I believe that social advertising has an extremely promising future. While it has yet to be perfected, I think that one day social advertising can generate more effective ads then traditional banner (and comparable) advertising.

This area must be explored further though because the industry as a whole is entering uncharted territory and one slip up could negatively impact the entire industry. In my own experience, arriving at an external site that knows who my friends are is shocking. My guess is that the average user will also be slightly creeped out about how that information was obtained.

After dwelling on the topic of privacy and transparency for third-party ad networks for the past couple weeks I’ve come up with a number of issues. First of all, it is clear that Facebook is having a tough time monitoring third-party ad networks but they feel obligated to maintain a healthy ecosystem for these companies. It has become somewhat of a conflict of interest and Facebook will need to become more transparent about their privacy discussions with third-parties to maintain trust with their users.

Users must be aware of companies that have access to their personal information when they are installing applications. There are other ad networks which would like to mimic some of the functionality that SocialMedia offers in their “social banners” but they are hesitant to create similar offerings because this has clearly become a gray area.

The combination of publicly available information and information within Facebook through the use of automated systems becomes a really fragile subject. There is a serious need for public discussion about the issue of privacy on the Facebook platform and competing platforms before we have a disaster on our hands. The industry is walking a thin line and keeping the discussions behind closed doors could irreparably damage everybody involved.

What are your thoughts about the current state of privacy with third-party applications? How can we get the conversation about privacy started? Also, what types of privacy standards do you think are important to protect users?

The internet is a buzz today with a study that came out last week talking about how the percentage of children that are harassed sexually online. The report claims a third of all tweenagers between 10 and 15 have had inappropriate sexual advances made on them by adults.

The results of the survey are being used to taught the greater security that comes from social networks vs. IM and Chat Rooms. I find the results interesting, but fail to see this as a glowing recommendation of the safety found on social networks.

First an foremost in my mind is the age restrictions placed on minor’s accounts on Facebook and Myspace. People under the age of 14 have extremely limited accounts are incredibly hard to contact if you do not receive permission first.

I applauded Facebook and Myspace for placing these restrictions on accounts, but what about the 15-17 crowd still being exposed to unwarranted advances. I wonder if the study would have yielded the same results if a slightly older crowd was surveyed.

Secondly, IM and chat are not the beginning of someones social interaction. IM in particular is a tool used to communicate with people already in your social graph. Once you have meet someone on a social network you may begin to chat with them. Does this let social networks off the hook because the crime took place in a third party chat?

I agree social networks are more likely to be safer than IM or chat for minors. My fear however is people will read these results and drop their guard. The survey states the 55 percent of harassments come from chat rooms and IMs, doesn’t that then imply that 45 percent comes from social networks?

The bottom line is this regardless of how your child is communicating online; chat, IM, SMS, online video games, social networks or basic email, parents must remain vigilant. I do not have children but I have to ask. What do you feel is the safest way for your children to be online? Do you let your child surf the internet without your supervision.

Last week I wrote a post that sparked on allfacebook that sparked an interest in many of our readers. The post focused on three high school students who created a profile of one of their professors and listed him as a pedophile. I had insinuated that the real reason the students had not received a harsh punishment was because the teacher had made himself a public figure.

My claim was based on the fact that the teacher had posted profile information about himself and a picture on the school’s website. Since the students had used this information to create a fake profile and therefore proving defamation would have been incredibly difficult; because the teacher had entered the public debate through his own accord.

I had received several emails from people informing me that “I was wrong” and “you are an idiot.” While I never claim to be the smartest man alive, I am pretty sure I am not an idiot (my mother tells me so). Most of the complaints came from people who voluntarily created a Facebook profile or comment on blogs regularly. The teachers professional profile is one off from a Facebook profile, but the principle is the same.

The idea behind what makes a public figure in the United States is constantly contested. Everyone agrees celebrities and politicians are instant public figures, and there are involuntary public figures (people involved in crimes, sensational actions or anything that has instant public appeal), but what turns a private citizen to a public figures is still up in the air.

Say I post on twitter all day, I do, and someone takes a tweet of mine and posts it on the internet. The moment that tweet leaves my phone or desktop I no longer have possession of it. I have freely let my opinion and voice enter the public debate and I have very limited rights to ‘take it back’ if someone repost my tweet. The same holds true with photos I post.

It is possible to prove defamation even if I am a public figure, but to be honest I do not have the finical resources or the time to do so. Many of you out there voiced concern wondering if information you put out made you a public figure. According to the law it does, according to good reason it doesn’t, this is the balancing act that our legal system handles every day.

Don’t confuse debate with a conversation or something formal you see on T.V. A debate can be one man’s ranting about anything as long as he puts it in the public light. The question of who is a public figure is growing larger and larger every day. As more and more people post private information about themselves on line, more and more people enter the public light.

I know many of you out there have an opinion on this subject and I would love to hear it. I am certain I will receive hate mail for this post, but I think it is a debate that should take place. Let me know what you think as long as you aren’t afraid of entering a public debate.

There is more drama taking place on Techmeme today but surprisingly it is not about Facebook. The drama began with a posting on Slashdot in which countless complaints about Google reader’s new shared feature have been posted. These complaints are practically identical to those being heard when Facebook launched Beacon. As Robert Scoble points out, the solution is simple: Granular Privacy Controls.

All social sites must now introduce granular privacy controls that enable users to both opt-in and opt-out of social services. Additionally, privacy settings must be available on a contact by contact basis. Facebook now provides these features and soon enough you will be able to modify your profile for each contact group. While not all the features are required, basic privacy settings definitely are.

If Google is going to succeed with their OpenSocial project, they will need to rapidly adapt and make changes. Users are forgiving so long as you make the necessary changes immediately. Otherwise, your users will leave and never look back. This time around I think that Google deserves a get out of jail free card but they won’t be receiving such gracious givings in the future. Just as Facebook has made their mistakes in navigating the social web, so will Google.

Google needs to be even more careful though given their massive user base. Integrating email with other features is also a risky game. It appears that even Google is willing to take a few more risks to try and make things just a little more social for us all.